9 Years of Shadows

It looks amazing, I really like the protagonist even though the story and the character arc leaves a lot left to be desired but whatever, I can take a simple story any day of the week if it's well done. That's the good, the bad is almost everything else. Unfortunately the gameplay is just tedious. You know how for example in other Metroidvanias you can get around more easily the further you progress the game? Or have a teleport system? Yeah this game doesn't really have that. Going through areas again just never becomes a flawless experience, it's always somewhat annoying because the same enemies that were a nuissance in the beginning of the game still remain the very same nuissance at the end of it. You have a main elevator that doesn't connect to 80% of the areas you go to so you always have to walk seemingly endless miles to get to a room you may have missed. And did you happen to find a room that you couldn't solve just yet because you missed something? Better write that s*** down in OneNote or else you'll forget where or what it was you missed. Fucking Zero Mission or Fusion on the GBA had a system in the game that showed you where you might have missed something. But implement that and people might notice that there really isn't a whole lot beyond the pretty pixel art and the ok soundtrack. My favorite though was putting like 20 rooms in front of the final boss with their only purpose being to show off hideous portraits of their kickstarter backers. You HAVE to go through these rooms btw. It's MANDATORY to beat the game. Not hidden or displayed in a charming way, just kinda piled on top of each other. Disappointing mess. I never write reviews but this genuinely irritated me Müsst Ihr wissen.

Beautiful pixel art, good gameplay with a few nice innovations (the transformations are a lot of fun). The normal enemies lack variety, but the bosses are very creative and fun.

The game sold me on the idea that it was a "new take on metroidvania". The art in general is probably what has kept me going, but the mechanics and bugs are a hard no. The ammo/health combo mechanic is not very well fleshed out, so boss fights are either a rush to kill without learning patterns, or you giving up because one hit means you cannot reload/heal without the long animation ensuring your death. The idea behind it is great, but it's just not right. As for the bugs... did you accidentally press the backslide button before a loading screen? Your character cannot move forward now unless you're jumping. Some enemies are platforms, but also enemies, so if you're unlucky, you can get stuck in a pixel that's both a solid platform AND a hitbox. Some walls are meant for you to jump and shoot into, but if you misdirect your jump, you're going to get stuck in there, and there's no way to get out unless you quit out. (I have a screenshot with exactly that problem). Sometimes you'll get hit while trying to heal, and for some reason you'll get that input stuck, so if you want to avoid a second hit (and death), you won't be able because your character will try to go for the heal over and over again. Unless the bugs are fixed (which seems like a long shot, since it's been months at this point) I don't recommend this one.

Lovely pixel art without that low effort sprite stretching over unity model and two or three above average musical tracks (rest is decent) - that's about it. Functionally zero effort put into level design, enemy mechanics and core gameplay idea of health pool doubling as ammo which makes regular "exploration" (game is 100% linear and will take you through almost every area by itself) too easy and boss fights a chore. Wouldn't recommend to anyone, life is too short for cold coffee, bad food or unpolished slash bad games.

Budget Metroidvania without about 7 - 8 hours of content. If you like you genre you like this game. Has a fair amount of jank in it so save often. Has a very slow but very short start that probably turns alot of people off but once you get a few armor sets the game flows pretty well.